


Queens

by threeturn



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Fae & Fairies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-03
Updated: 2012-09-03
Packaged: 2017-11-18 05:39:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/557496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threeturn/pseuds/threeturn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morgana is Queen of the Faeries. Gwen is Queen of Albion. They were girls together, and now Morgana wants her back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Queens

Morgana hovers, invisible. She sees two crowned heads: one dark, one light. The blond one speaks. The other shifts in her seat. Bored? Uncomfortable? Bows and curtsies run through the crowd that stands before them, as if wind were bending flowers in a field. 

Morgana looks for one particular girl in the crowd. She doesn't remember her name. She only remembers the way she moved, the way she talked until her voice dissolved into giggles. It was long ago.

The girl's not there. Nor in the lower town either. It was pointless to come. 

The blond one whispers to a man without a crown. The woman at his side waits, silent and polite. Morgana sighs, tired of mortals already. Dabbling with humankind is for children. She ought to go back to her own kind, choose a consort at last. It was an odd fancy, wanting to see the girl again. Just once before retreating to her own lands forever. 

Then the woman who wears the crown looks up. Looks at Morgana.  _As if she could see me_ , thinks Morgana, shaking her head.  _Still, there's something in her eyes…_

The woman blinks. And then smiles, a flash of pure joy in the stone-grey room. She's smiling at Morgana.   
  
_She_ does _see me_ , thinks Morgana, the thought rising before she can check its stupidity. But it's true. The woman is looking her up and down, clearly bewildered. And then Morgana remembers her name. The shock of it jolts her to the ground. She's still holding Gwen's gaze when she blinks out of the room. Gone. 

*

Morgana spends a cold clear night away from her followers, breathing smoky autumn air, distracting herself with leaves, earth, roots, salt water. She doesn't lie to herself, though. That's a skill for mortals and one that doesn't long endure in thin faery air. Now she's found Gwen, she knows she'll be back.    

The next day, Gwen's walking alone in the castle gardens. She's laced and fine, heavy skirts trailing, and Morgana sucks in a breath to see her so unfree. Her hair is glorious though, streaming down her back. Morgana ought to be tangling her fingers there. It won't be long, though. It can't be.

Morgana waits at the turn of the path, sitting on the branch of a plum tree past its season. She takes a withered fruit and breathes on it. It swells, purples over, ripe in her hands. When Gwen turns the corner, Morgana tosses it to her. 

Gwen startles, but doesn't let it fall. Spreads her skirts wide like a net to receive it, snatches it up from where she's kept it from bursting on the cold dry ground. She doesn't bite, though. She holds it, looks evenly at Morgana.

"You came back," she says, guarded. Yesterday's joy is gone. Still, she's polite.

Morgana says, "You can see me," because of all the things she understands, the four elements, the seasons, the spheres, this is the one mystery that she doesn't. 

"Why wouldn't I?" asks Gwen. 

Morgana stares. "Because I'm queen of the faeries."

Gwen shrugs. "And I'm the queen of Albion." Her lips quirk, as if the words are too silly to pass without notice. 

"You weren't always that, were you?" Morgana sees it now, the thin circlet of gold in her hair. It's lighter than the clumsy ceremonial thing on her head yesterday, a halo instead of a vise. Morgana doesn't wear a crown. She doesn't need to. All creation knows who she is. "Not when we played together. You were ordinary children, you and your brother. You lived in the house of fire, you made shiny things. Swords that glowed." 

"Our father did," Gwen agrees. She breaks off a dead branch from the tree, starts stripping it of bark. "Later things changed. That was after you left me." The accusation in her words is hard to miss.

"You were getting too old to run in the fields with me," says Morgana. 

"I was the same age as you," says Gwen.

"In a way," agrees Morgana. "Too old. You would have stopped seeing me." 

"Except that I haven't." 

"Yes," says Morgana. "But I didn't know that then." How can she explain that she didn't want to alight before Gwen and see blind eyes and a blank face? She wouldn't have been able to bear it. At last she says, "I didn't want to say good-bye."

Gwen rolls the plum between her fingers, silent. "Eat it," says Morgana. "I breathed its life back for you." 

Gwen closes her fingers around it, doesn't eat. "I know what happens when mortals eat the food of the faeries, Morgana."

"Yes?" Morgana says. "And why not?"

Gwen walks over to the stone wall, hikes herself up as if she's not wearing layers of silk. "Did you think I'd just come when you called? I cried a long time when you left, but I've got used to people leaving. There's a life here for me, you know. Friends. Responsibilities. A husband."   
  
"The blond boy?" Morgana rolls her eyes. She steps closer to Gwen, puts cool fingers on her throat to feel the blood rush past. "What's he _for_ , anyway?"  
  
"He's a good king," says Gwen gently. She puts a warm hand on top of Morgana's, holding it there.   
  
"But you don't love him," says Morgana, feeling that truth just under Gwen's skin.   
  
Gwen laughs, lets go. Morgana remembers a little girl in braids, tagging her in a field of wildflowers and turning to run. "Oh, well, _love_ ," says Gwen, in the same tone that most mortals use to talk about faeries. The way you talk about something you'd like to believe in, but of course you're far too clever for that.

"You're wasted here," says Morgana.   
  
"I don't expect you to understand how it feels to be able to make things different for others," Gwen says, serious suddenly. "To know you can help when they ask."  
  
"I'd help you," says Morgana, and leans forward. She means to kiss Gwen's mouth, but Gwen tilts her jaw away, skittish, so Morgana kisses her shoulder instead, right at the place where skin and lace meet. It's tight, that neckline.  Morgana hooks a finger under it and traces the line of lace over her collarbone. When she looks up, Gwen's watching her, speculative.

"When I was eight," Gwen says, "I'd wake up in the morning and think, maybe Morgana will come play today.  Maybe we'll wade in the stream and she'll hold my hand." 

"Sweet," says Morgana.

"Yes," says Gwen. "I hated that you'd run over those rocks and never fall." 

Morgana draws back, confused.

"Because I wanted to rescue you," says Gwen. "But you never needed me." She sets the plum down neatly on the stone wall beside her.

Morgana thinks of the time since she'd left Gwen, time that passed like quicksilver and dragged like great fields of ice. "Like all mortals," whispers Morgana. "Stupid." She knows what to do next to set Gwen straight, but it's Gwen who pulls her down, kisses her. Standing between Gwen's legs, Morgana feels her skin shocked into life, groans from the sheer heaviness of mortal pleasure. It's too much, and for a moment she springs back toward lightness, air, before Gwen tightens her grip and Morgana opens her mouth.

But _it's wrong, it's wrong_ , Morgana thinks. Gwen shouldn't take control like that, her tongue in Morgana's mouth, her fingernails pressing into Morgana's bare back.  _The greed of mortals_ , Morgana thinks, and decides to re-establish a proper balance. She pulls back a little, uses her teeth on Gwen's neck, gathers fistfuls of Gwen's skirt to push it up her legs. She's not happy to hear Gwen laughing. Morgana lifts her head, glares.

Gwen says, "You aren't very ethereal, you know."

Morgana lets Gwen's skirts slide back. Perhaps it won't be today. Perhaps it will be tomorrow, or next year.   
  
"For a faery, I mean," says Gwen. 

"I'm lowering myself to your level," Morgana snaps.

"Is that what you call it?" Gwen slips down from the wall, adjusts her gown. 

Morgana sighs. "We tend to become more…corporeal…at times like this." 

"Dinnertime, you mean?" says Gwen. "It's gone noon, queen of the faeries. I can't be roaming about with imaginary friends all day."

"I'm not—" Morgana starts. 

"Not that I mean you're imaginary," says Gwen. "Or a friend, for that matter."

"Gwen," says Morgana. "I'll take you with me. You'll be my handmaiden—"

"Ugh, _really_?" says Gwen. "Had enough of that here before Arthur put me on a throne." 

Morgana is puzzled. "But it's a great honor, you know."

"Use your faery magic and predict the future, Morgana," says Gwen. "I'm gonna say no."

"It's him, isn't it?" said Morgana. "You don't want to break his heart." 

Gwen's face grows even colder. "Done that before, too."

"Mortal hearts are made to be broken," says Morgana. She remembers watching Gwen cry sometimes, sobbing something about her mother. Morgana hadn't liked it. But she'd been patient as she waited for it to stop.

Gwen nods, unsurprised. "You were always heartless."

It was all going wrong. "But," says Morgana, and wonders what she's about to say. "But you will be my heart."

Gwen's dark eyes meet hers. She puts a warm hand on Morgana's hip. "Morgana," she says. "Don't think this is easy." Then she's striding off down the path. 

 _Back to her cage_ , Morgana thinks. She sees the plum on the wall, abandoned. She takes it with her when she goes.

*

Morgana settles a dispute between the elms and the chestnut trees, reroutes a river following a flood. She sends Morgause over the water to treat with the fair folk on the other side. She still hasn't taken a consort, which the water nymphs think is hilarious. She misses someone.

It's been a month or a season or a year or more. Morgana can't be expected to keep track of mortal time. Mortals make inky marks to hold the days bound and captive forever, as if they don't carry their days anyway like burdens on their backs. Terrible to be a mortal, Morgana reminds herself. But it's a truth she's finding it harder to remember.   

She makes her decision in wintertime, when a wet snow blankets the garden where Gwen said no. Morgana finds her bundled in furs on her bed talking to that tiresome boy without a crown. The fire is roaring in the hearth. It might be the warmest room in the castle, actually, except for the blond boy's room down the hall. 

Morgana sits on the window ledge, waiting for Gwen to notice. When Gwen's eyes widen, Morgana knows she's been seen. She jerks her head at the boy and Gwen rolls her eyes, tells him something. The boy rises instantly, mutters to the fire, trips over something. He's gone. 

"Where's the other one?" says Morgana. 

Gwen sighs, but not unhappily. "He doesn't sleep here anymore. We like it better that way." 

Morgana has ten cutting things to say, but stifles them all. She waits. Gwen stretches in her furs, sits up against the headboard in her white sleeping shift. Her skin glows in the firelight. "It's not drafty by the window?" she asks kindly.

"I don't feel it," says Morgana.

"Right," says Gwen. "Can you feel anything?"

"Your mouth," says Morgana. "Your hands." 

Gwen sighs. "Morgana—"

"Tell me you felt nothing," says Morgana. "All mortals lie.  So tell me."

Gwen looks at her and says nothing. 

Morgana slips down, walks to the hearth. "This fire is wrong," she says. "Not started by natural means."

"Old news," says Gwen. "It's still warm."

"I brought something else wrong," says Morgana, and the plum is in her hand, round, dusky purple, still full of life.

"I won't eat it," says Gwen. "I won't be stolen, I won't be owned."

"No," says Morgana.  "It's for me." She looks at the fierce line of Gwen's jaw, the thin bones of her wrists, the bump of her knees under the fur. Morgana holds the plum to her own mouth, breathes it in. "It's partly mortal still," she says. She looks into Gwen's eyes and bites. The flavor bursts on her tongue, sharp and sweet. Gwen watches, utterly still. Morgana takes another bite, the juice of it coating her lips. 

Then Gwen's scrambling up, over to her, pulling the plum from her hand, sticky where the juice ran over her knuckles. "Oh god," says Gwen. "Morgana.  What did you do?"

"It works both ways," says Morgana, shakily. "Please, Gwen? I couldn't leave you again."

"Morgana," whispers Gwen. There's no space left between them. Gwen doesn't kiss Morgana. She licks juice from her lips, careful as a cat. 

"Don't," says Morgana sharply. "It'll still bind you."

"You bound yourself first," Gwen says. "Now it's both ways. Do you see?"

Morgana nods, beginning to understand. "Both of us changed. But you'll still be queen."

"So will you."

"And also yours."

"Half in this world and half out," muses Gwen. "How's it feel, being part mortal?"

Morgana isn't sure. "I'm waiting for my half a heart," she says.

"Take mine," says Gwen. She pulls off her shift, as if it were the one thing holding back the gift.

Morgana doesn't let herself touch yet. "And being part faery," she says. "How does that feel?"

"Like this," says Gwen, and slides up against her. "Like that," she says again when Morgana's lying under her on the bed. 

"I know," says Morgana, and pulls Gwen's hand up to her chest, presses it where she can feel something inside flickering to life. A fire. A heart. 

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt at the Gwen/Morgana AU ficathon on LiveJournal, September 2012.


End file.
